Hypersexualized Images

Body image and beauty standards have changed drastically over the years. By establishing impossible standards of beauty and bodily perfection, the media drives people tobe dissatisfied with their bodies. This dissatisfaction can result in disorders of behavior as people try to achieve unreachable goals with unhealthy

Modern people live media-saturated lives, even children as young as 6 years old, have had some type of media exposure. Extensive exposure to media outlets can lead to body image issues. Body image is defined as, the subjective picture or mental image of one's own body (Smolak 2003). Body image is formed as people compare themselves to others. Because, people are exposed to countless media images; these images become the basis for such comparisons. These mental comparisons, have a strong influence on an individual’s personal perception of beauty. Media outlets create images and pressures about what our bodies should look like; however, sometimes these images have been manipulated, creating an unrealistic expectation of beauty. When an individual believes that their body is substandard, they can become depressed, suffer from low self-esteem, or develop eating disorders.

Women’s Body Image (www.wellesley.edu/Health/BodyImage) helped demonstrates the young influence of magazines. Those days when girls strive to be something they weren’t, were probably the most crucial days in body imaging. They succumbed into the pressure of looking how everyone else wants them to look. Such teeny bopper magazines sell to many young girls the idea of beauty. Teen Magazine is the princess of that royal court. In every young woman, or man’s mind, there is this longing to be desired. To be desired, you must be attractive. To be attractive, you have to look like that girl on page seventy-one in the latest Teen Magazine (Women’s Body Image).

While these cases were obviously false, neither impacted the self-esteem of impressionable teenage girls like some of the advertisements of today. Many false advertising cases, which heavily impact teens, come from cosmetics and weight-loss supplement companies which promise immediate results. These results are fueled by the desire to have flawless skin and to be extremely thin, like the models are portrayed as in the advertisements, but what these susceptible young girls do not see is the airbrushing and photoshopping and intense editing that happens before any photos are published. The desire to be like the models in these false advertising cases has caused a spike in depression, eating disorders, and hyper-sexism in teen girls.

Recently, a hot topic has been the effects of media on body image. There has been speculation that media can lower an individual's satisfaction with their body. Scott Westerfeld portrays this same idea in his book Uglies. All Tally Youngblood wants to do is be a Pretty like her best friend Peris (Westerfeld, 2005). In Tally's world this is normal; at sixteen everyone has a surgery to them into beautiful human beings (Westerfeld, 2005).

The media needs to stop being the judge of what beauty is because everyone is pressured to look like the photoshopped version of the people the media portrays. Bad body imaging can lead to mental and eating disorders, and “fear of becoming fat” has become a common phenomenon.

The media is one of the leading causes of self esteem and body image issues in not only women but men as well. This is due to the fact that thousands of advertisements contain messages about physical attractiveness and beauty. Examples include: commercials for clothes, cosmetics, weight loss, hair removal, laser surgery and physical fitness. The effects of advertising on body image have been studied by researchers, psychologists, marketing professionals and more. Researchers, Mary Martin and James Gentry found that teen directed advertising negatively impacts self-esteem. The advertising industry is setting unrealistic expectations for teens about their physical appearances by using models with "perfect bodies." The modeling industry today has put many pressures on models, causing them disorders of both mental and physical illness. These disorders then creating the look of the “perfect body” have now lead to unrealistic expectations of body image for society.

The issue of distorting body image in the media and its effects on people is not a new concept to modern time. There is a long history of body image’s powerful place in society because of people’s impressions of each other based on body image. Research has been done on the effects and outcomes of this issue. Recently, consumers have fought with the media to try and achieve a safer way to spread information and let these media outlets be successful without having severe impacts on adolescents especially, among other age groups. The general ethical principle that the stakeholders use in this fight is similar to utilitarianism, because each stakeholder believes they are bringing the greatest good to the greatest number of people. The stakeholders

This article talks about how photoshop allows advertisers to give models different body types that they did not had before. The false images affects the way that people see beauty in an unrealistic way, also false image cause low self-esteem and negative impact of people body image. With false advertisement women feels pressure to have the perfect body either by plastic surgery or unhealthy diet plans. This article is useful to use because it shows what the media uses to bring people self esteem down and how people would look at their body image differently

Looking good and being in shape is a top priority of today’s adults. According to the American Society of Plastic surgery (ASPA) 14.6 million cosmetic surgery procedures were performed in the United States in 2012. This is a 5 percent increase since 2011. The constant media advertisement of weight loss, sex appeal, and cosmetically enhanced beauty often leads to unrealistic standards of beauty and dissatisfaction in personal appearance. This overexposure to Hollywood beauty causes women to wonder how come they don’t look like that and often leaves them questioning what they can do to have a picture perfect body and face. According to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), the promotion of unhealthy standards of beauty by the media often leads to depression and dissatisfaction in personal appearance (Chittom 3). Media have a negative impact on women’s body image and how women respond to the media’s portrayal of what is beautiful by advertisements emphasizing the importance of physical attractiveness, using Photoshop and airbrushing techniques to alter images people see in advertisements, and disregarding healthy living.

Chronic dieting, low self-esteem, depression and, high levels of body dissatisfaction were among the major issues women face when addressing their body image (Gingras, Fitzpatrick, & McCargar, 2004). The severity of body image dissatisfaction have increased to such a dangerous state that it was added to the DSM-IV as a disorder now called body dysmorphic disorder (Suissa, 2008). One of the main reasons for the prevalence of these conditions in women was due to contemporary Western media, which serve as one of the major agent in enforcing an ultra-thin figure as the ideal for female beauty (Saraceni & Russell-Mayhew, 2007). These images and models presented by the media have become the epitome of beauty, pushing women who internalized these images to dangerous extent to attain these norms. According to evidence from previous studies, contemporary Western cultures have influenced women to an acquired normative state of discontent with their bodies, which have become the source of maladaptive eating practices, negative psychological outcomes, and, chronic health conditions associated with eating disorders (Snapp, Hensley-Choate, & Ryu, 2012). The seriousness of these body image conditions among youths and women have also led to congressional actions.

For example, a personal problem many women face is Body Dysmorphic Disorder. This mental illness comprises of an obsessive fixation on a perceived flaw of the body. Moreover, the fixation on the imperfect causes women to compulsively check the perceived flaws, engage in behaviors to minimize the perceived flaws, as well as, detrimentally compare their appearance to that of others. Though the disorder is hardly noticeable to the general public, it is a personal problem many women encounter. With the use of the sociological imagination, Body Dysmorphic Disorder correlates to the strong presence of media. Specifically, the exposure to certain beauty standards along with, particular ideas of womanhood. Additionally, unrealistic images through the usage of photoshop effect the mental health of women as well as, the way in which they perceive themselves. The pressure to look a certain way derived from the media is everywhere. Ultimately, the social issue of media impacts the triggers of Body Dysmorphia in women throughout the

Many young girls have to go through life being bombard with ads telling them they should look a certain way. Ads, music videos, TV shows, movies, and billboards all present one body type for woman to have. Photography has been used to preserve historical moments and to capture snap shots of life. Why now is it being used to give young girls a negative view point about their bodies? Several studies have been done to see if there is a connection between social media and negative body stereotypes. This paper will go over a handful of those studies to prove photography is being used to harm girls’ mental wellbeing.

Due to the extensive amount of harm that photo manipulation causes, it is an ethical issue. Digital photo manipulation in women causes widespread harm, long-lasting damage to women 's self-esteem and other negative psychological thought processes. Research has also found that it causes a large number of eating disorders. It does this by making women chase the ideal, thin body image that is being portrayed in the different pictures and advertisements. There was a study done that examined both the thin-ideal and body classification. Results from this showed that viewing the thin-ideal lead to a higher level of body dissatisfaction (Whyte, Newman, & Voss, 2016). Thereby this issue diminishes the autonomy of the viewers, uses models as a

Over the years a debate over who is to blame over the decline in how girls perceive themselves has arisen. With Photoshop being the societal norm concerning the media, it has become difficult for many to understand where the line between real and near impossible standards lies. Youths see an image edited to “perfection” and strive to reach the standards that they imagine due to the images displayed on magazines, television and social media. From Disney to magazines like Vogue the mass media bombards audiences with fake beauty that they, as normal people, will never be able to achieve. The mass media is responsible for causing the rise in the number of people with a poor body image, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgeries.